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Parimatch’s people first approach is recipe for sustainable success

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Employment in the 21st century is no longer about simply finding a job for life and as the desire for work to engage, educate and enhance employee’s lives increases, companies who can foster talent are akin to bottling lightning. With more than 1,600 employees operating in multiple territories across the globe, Parimatch’s decision to seek out and develop tomorrow’s industry leaders has proven a winning tactic as the company’s expansion strategy continues apace.

The universal language of business has opened the door for more and more forward-thinking companies to embrace and grow their teams internationally as the industry continues to expand into new markets. However, to ensure employee engagement remains a core focus, it’s key to invest in both your employees through a blend of stability and adventure according to Parimatch Head of Corporate Development Katerina Belorusskaya. “Despite the turbulence of the markets in which we operate we are a stable, reliable and honest company with constant growth over the past 25 years. On the other hand, we are ambitious and risk-taking which attracts genius people who are looking for an unusual approach and bold decisions. Parimatch is a big international family where our staff has the opportunity for constant development.”

She continued: “As with every company nowadays we understand that the key to success is talent. Our people are at the heart of the organization. Their ambitions, knowledge, and skills helped us to become who we are today. Our employees are our future.”

With their employee numbers have grown by about 15 – 20% annually since 2016 amid larger recruitment bursts as the company develops in new markets, the need for motivation has naturally grown too. “Engaged employees see their importance, which is the biggest motivation,” continued Belorusskaya. “Here, in Parimatch we realized this fact a long time ago, and now we’re trying to do our best to grow our unique corporate culture where employees are engaged, devoted and feel that they drive the business. Employee engagement can become one of the most significant workplace problems, indeed. Also, vice versa: an engaged employee can form a positive attitude towards the organization and its values which makes them go above and beyond to contribute a lot more.”

Following up on its goal to invest in its people, throughout 2018 the Cyprus-based company delivered 1,300 hours of education across 53 unique pieces of training through its Corporate University of Parimatch initiative, including specialized courses on bookmaking, sports, software and language classes. Discussing its inception, Katerina explained: “Our in-house university has been established to develop employees not only professionally but also mentally helping them to find a balance between work and life. Also, our CSR activities are significant. Philanthropy is a powerful HR tool that strengthens the team, inspires employees, forms parallel connections and shared values among them. So, all the time we try to make social projects truly beneficial for employees for them to want to be a part of this.”

For Parimatch, new markets are key to the recruitment strategy with the company significantly strengthening the local and partner teams in Kazakhstan and Russia recently preparing both territories for some ambitious goals in the coming years. “We are open to new horizons and opportunities,” stated CHRO Tatyana Davydova, who recently joined the company after more than five years at Playtech, where she has taken the role of Head of Global HR. “So there is much more to be done to achieve the ambitious goals of the company for example adopting cultures across our brand is the primary challenge for the HR team in relation to global mobility. In one hand organizations across industries are embracing the benefits of a diverse workforce. However, with benefits come the challenges of working across borders, cultures, and languages.”

To achieve its seamless overcoming of cultural barriers across multiple offices whilst maintaining happy and productive teams, Parimatch has instilled English as its official corporate language for the back office and circulates a holistic environment of common values and corporate unity through consistent, integrated sharing of information. Davydova explained: “It is crucial, and at the same time not easy to create a comfortable environment for everyone regardless of cultural background and location. We have been working on this a lot over the past five years and only today we can say that we feel the ground under our feet for all our employees.

“At some stage, we realized it can be complicated to unite people from different cultural mindsets and places in one, productive team without principles and values that would join them all. Therefore, we have created an integrated information space or flow. We believe it is essential that each employee is aware of what is happening in the life of a group in another country so the flow was developed across multiple information channels to create a monthly digest, video or blog to keep everyone in touch.”

Corporate unity also forms a major aspect of Parimatch’s people first approach exemplified by their bi-annual strategic sessions where the company or its partners hold operations and host employee representatives from all countries at large-scale gatherings. “These strategic sessions are an excellent platform for the exchange of experience, ideas, specific (local) cases between employees from different countries,” Belorusskaya added. “In such an atmosphere, cultural affiliation is replaced by association with the culture that is formed within the company. As for the relocation of employees and their adaptation in another country, in a team with other cultural values – this is a separate and fascinating topic. In short, our people are what drives our business and a unique corporate culture that is one for all, regardless of race, creed or language is key.”

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Entain Examines Possible Sale of Overseas Gambling Brands

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Entain has hired advisers to oversee the possible sale of several of its overseas brands, according to reports.

These brands include Netherlands-based BetCity, which the gambling firm had bought last year.

The Netherlands, last year proposed a plan for tighter deposit limits from the second quarter, which is expected to hit Entain’s annual revenue and profit, the company said earlier this month.

A local offshoot of Ladbrokes in Australia, Sweden-based Enlabs and Georgia-based CrystalBet are other brands that are not integrated into Entain’s main tech platform and under review, reports said.

Wall Street boutique advisory Moelis is advising Entain’s board and the group’s recently formed capital allocation committee, and any disposals will be of brands that are not integrated into the company’s technology platform, which makes them easier to sell.

Entain, like other gambling firms, gained from a rise in online betting during the pandemic, but stiffer regulations in its main markets have hurt its bottom line.

The UK, the gambling firm’s largest market, is expected to put out a review this year, which is said to include a stake cap on slots at 5 pounds ($6.37) and increased affordability checks.

Entain expects its core profit to incur a 40 million pounds hit in 2024 from the regulatory moves in the UK and Netherlands.

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The RNG scaling problem

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The RNG scaling problem
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By Lorenzo Nardini, Head of Technical Compliance and Maths Services, at ComplianceOne Group

When I was a child, I lived in Italy and I used to play some card games with my friends. There is a huge variety of Italian traditional card games: Briscola, Scopa, TreSette are only a few of them. All these games are played with an Italian deck of cards, which consists of 40 cards divided into four suits, each containing ten cards ranked from one to ten. (If you are not familiar with these cards, I suggest searching them online as their artwork is beautiful and it varies across the different regions of that country). Most of the games I played required an equal distribution of cards among the players. This was easily done when playing in two or four as each player would get respectively twenty or ten cards each. However, when we played in a group of three, a problem naturally arose: how could we equally split the deck since 40 is not a multiple of 3? Fortunately, this was not a difficult problem and for most games it was perfectly acceptable to simply remove (reject) one card from the deck and then to assign the remaining ones in 3 groups of 13.

Later in life, I discovered that this seemingly childish problem was a recurring issue for gaming companies seeking certification for their Random Number Generators. In the gaming industry, the generation of random numbers is a core element that enables gaming platforms to produce unpredictable events. In this regard, RNGs are the engine that games use to decide, for instance, the final position of the symbols in a slot machine, the cards that will be dealt in a Poker or Blackjack hand, or when the plane will crash in the recently popular Crash games.

Each Random Number Generator is unique in terms of its components and the applications for which it is designed to generate random events. You can have a software RNG that is based on famous (in this community) algorithms such as the Mersenne Twister, you can have cryptographically strong solutions that take entropy from random events. I even once read a short paper about a “banana” RNG based on the natural decay of potassium atoms inside that fruit.

Regardless of the basis of your RNG solution, it will most likely generate unscaled random numbers. The most typical format is probably the 32bit which means the RNG returns a number between 0 and 232-1 (that is 4,294,967,295). This range is typically too large to be directly employed to generate game events: most card games require numbers between 1 and 52 as that is the standard deck size, numbers for slot machine outcomes typically range in the hundreds or thousands, and if you simply need to decide where the ball will land in a virtual single zero roulette, you simply need to request a number between 0 and 36.

How to then use the 32bit number to create outcomes for all these games? Assigning a number from the “large” range to one in the “small” range is called “scaling”. There are several methods to perform this operation and, in order to comply with jurisdictional standards, most countries require that the scaling method is performed in such a way to not introduce any bias, that means that all mapped numbers (also known as final outcomes) have the same probability to occur.

This is, in fact, the same problem that I was facing as a child when trying to equally split the deck of cards. And in the same way, this is easily solved when the large number (232 in our case) is a multiple of the target range, though this is seldom the case. This is exactly where I have seen multiple suppliers of RNG solutions failing their testing: ignoring that the target range not always divides the unscaled one results in having final outcomes that are not equally likely. Effectively, this means that when playing a roulette game, it is more likely that the ball lands on 0 rather than on 36.

However, the same solution I used as a child when playing cards in a group of three can be applied here: simply discard/reject some values until we are left with a multiple of our target range. For instance, if you need your RNG to generate numbers for a slot game in the target range 100 because such is your reel length, you first get an unscaled number in the 32bit format (that, remind, is 0 – 4,294,967,295) and then you discard it in the unlikely event that this is at least 4,294,967,200. All remaining numbers are then equally mapped to the target range by taking the remainder of their division by 100 – which simply means you take its last two digits.

To many, this might seem like a trivial problem. Yet, I was surprised by how frequently I encountered this exact issue when testing RNG solutions. The issue had to be reported to the supplier, failing their testing, that meant that they eventually had to rewrite some portion of their code, make a new submission and, all in all, spending extra budget and time for something that can be easily avoided.

While the RNG scaling problem may seem simple, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. There are far more complex issues in the world of RNGs that require expert guidance. Understanding these problems is the first step towards improvement. If you’re looking for someone who can not only assist you in navigating these challenges but also help you understand them in a clear and accessible way, I’m here to help. Let’s work together to enhance your RNG solution and make your gaming platform stand out.

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Industry News

Flexion “Direct-to-Consumer” Talks with Top Mobile Game Developers at GDC Will Define the Future

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Executives from Flexion, the games marketing company, will hold a series of summit talks with top developers at GDC in San Francisco (18 to 22 March 2024) to discuss how direct-to-consumer (D2C) services could enhance revenue.

The D2C’24 Summit will focus on the opportunities offered to developers by recent moves freeing up the mobile games market and, in particular, on new routes to user acquisition. The aim will be to align the industry on the best way forward in light of changes in the app stores.

Flexion is already the leader in accessing alternative markets including Amazon, Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi, Aptoide, DT Hubs and ONEstore, boosting revenue for top games without upfront costs or significant effort. It is building on its partnerships with these platforms and other industry leading companies from UA to 3rd party billing to meet future developer needs.

“We have many years of experience and the know-how in taking an existing game and finding new revenue sources. We have also built partnerships across the industry – including with alternative app stores – that will allow us to help developers go much further in future,” Jens Lauritzson, CEO of Flexion, said.

In the last quarter, Flexion saw a 64% increase in its own revenue, as an increasing number of developers took the plunge into alternative markets. Through working with Flexion, developers see a more than 10% average boost in revenue (over marketing in Google Play alone) without significantly adding to their costs.

Jens said: “Developers have been frustrated by difficult user acquisition, where it is challenging to achieve positive returns due to changes in tracking and high store fees. But with the DMA in Europe and court cases in the US forcing Google and Apple to ease their stranglehold on the mobile games market, now is an excellent time for developers to re-engage directly with consumers.

“Many will hesitate at the underlying complexity and size of investment needed to exploit these opportunities, and so third-party services, like those being developed by Flexion, are going to be vital in making the ROI figures work.”

Through the D2C’24 Summit, Flexion will canvas opinions and share its ideas on direct-to-consumer marketing with top developers. The goal will be to create a consensus on the tools and services developers will need to maximise returns.

“We’re at the edge of a step change in the mobile games market and it’s important for the industry that we get things right. That’s why we’ve invited developers to these talks, and I’d be happy to hear from anyone else who would like to contribute to the discussion,” Jens said.

Ben Anquetil’s appointment as Head of Business Development is an important part of Flexion’s future-focused strategy. He has a brief to evaluate the company’s value proposition for D2C with the aim of ensuring that developers generate better return on their marketing spend going forward.

“I’m delighted to welcome Ben to the Flexion family at such an exciting time. He has a wealth of experience in the alternative distribution space and in strategic initiatives that generate more revenue and audiences for developers. With his help, Flexion will grow a whole new aspect of its business, offering developers easy access to the burgeoning range of markets that will become the norm,” Jens said.

“I foresee amazing opportunities for developers. By using D2C services, they will be able to enhance user engagement and retention for their games while improving margin. These factors will give them the freedom to grow revenue and audiences,” Ben said.

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